The present invention relates generally to special service telephone call processing such as 800/8xx, 900 and xe2x80x9cVNETxe2x80x9d calls in a telecommunications network, and more particularly, to a World Wide Web/Internet enabled apparatus and methodology for viewing network call traffic information and call statistics in real-time.
Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. No. 5,537,611 issued Jul. 10, 1996 discloses a network management scheme for special service calls which allows the management of a telecommunications network to oversee the network to ascertain traffic surges and provide traffic controls to alleviate network congestion. In particular, this patent discloses the utilization of a Data Access Point (DAP) for storing information relating to different special service call numbers, information relating to subscribers who subscribe to the various services, and translation tables that provide the data needed to translate a special service call number into a real call number associated with a particular network switch. A processor associated with the DAP, referred to as a DAP Traffic Statistics (DTS), converts the collected traffic data into statistics data and forwards the same to a compiler processor of an Integrated Network Management System (INMS). The INMS provides reports containing the compiled statistics data for the special service call number to subscribers and the management of the telecommunications network. With the information from the INMS, a subscriber could read just the parameters for a special service call number and reallocate the calls made to the call number to different destination stations. The management of the network, at the same time, can review the information from the DTS and reroute traffic in the network to avoid congestion or call blocking caused by any one of the special service call numbers.
Conventionally, subscribers"" access to their telecommunications network call traffic information is made via a dial-up connection to the INMS mid range computer server from a customer owned personal computer or work station. This connection frequently, although not always, emulates a terminal addressable by the mid range computer system. The dial-up access requires custom software on the customer workstation to provide dial-up services, communication services, emulation and/or translation services and generally some resident custom form of the INMS mid range computer application to enable the interface therewith.
There are several problems associated with this approach:
First, the aforementioned software is very hardware specific, and customers generally have a wide range of workstation vendors, which requires extensive inventory for distribution, and generally, intensive customer hand holding through initial setup and installation before reliable and secure sessions are possible. If the customer hardware platform changes through an upgrade, most of these issues need renegotiation.
Secondly, dial-up, modem, and communications software interact with each other in many ways which are not always predicable to a custom application, requiring extensive trouble shooting and problem solving for an enterprise desiring to make the legacy system available to the customer, particularly where various telephone exchanges, dialing standards or signal standards are involved.
Third, when an enterprise desires to make more than one system available to the customer, the custom application for one legacy system or mid range application is not able to connect to a different legacy system, and the customer must generally logoff and logon to switch from one to the other. The delivery technology used by the two legacy systems may be different, requiring different interface standards, and different machine level languages may be used by the two systems, as for example, the 96 character EBSDIC language used by IBM, and the 127 character ASCII language used by contemporary personal computers.
Finally, the security and entitlement features of the various legacy systems may be completely different, and vary from system to system and platform to platform.
As subscriber""s desire an open access route to their 800/900 and VNET call traffic information and related statistics, it is desired to provide connectivity to enterprise mid range or legacy systems over the public Internet, as the Internet provides access connectivity world wide via the TCP/IP protocol, without need to navigate various telephone exchanges, dialing standards or signal standards.
The present invention is one component of an integrated suite of customer network management and report applications using the internet and a World Wide Web (xe2x80x9cWWWxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cWebxe2x80x9d) Web browser paradigm. Introduced to the communications industry as xe2x80x9cnMCI Interactxe2x80x9d the integrated suite of Web-based applications provides an invaluable tool for enabling customers of a telecommunications enterprise to manage their telecommunication assets, quickly and securely, from anywhere in the world.
The popularity of the public Internet provides a measure of platform independence for the customer, as the customer can run their own Internet web-browser and utilize their own platform connection to the Internet to enable service. This resolves many of the platform hardware and connectivity issues in the customers favor, and lets the customer choose their own platform and operating system. Web-based programs can minimize the need for training and support since they utilize existing client software which the user has already installed and already knows how to use. Further, if the customer later changes that platform, then, as soon as the new platform is Internet enabled, service is restored to the customer. The connectivity and communications software burden is thus resolved in favor of standard and readily available hardware and the browser and dialup software used by the public Internet connection.
An Internet delivered paradigm obviates many of the installation and configuration problems involved with initial setup and configuration of a customer workstation, since the custom application required to interface with the legacy system can be delivered via the public Internet and run within a standard web-browser, reducing application compatibility issues to browser compatibility issues.
For the enterprise, the use of off-the-shelf web browsers by the customer significantly simplifies the enterprise burden by limiting the client development side to screen layouts and data presentation tools that use a common interface enabled by the web browser. Software development and support resources are thus available for the delivery of the enterprise legacy services and are not consumed by a need for customer support at the work station level.
The present invention thus satisfies the above mentioned needs by providing an internet enabled and Web-based remote interface that allows a customer to open and monitor trouble tickets relating to network events on the enterprise network.
Parent case U.S. Ser. No. 08/587,381, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,825,769 describes the TrafficView System server (xe2x80x9cTVSxe2x80x9d) which comprises an integration of the existing DTS system and an MCI Traffic Statistics (MTS) system which is a service that provides subscribers with insight into their call attempts and completions, beyond current DTS reporting capabilities. The TVS system is thus comprehensive, providing subscribers with information related to their special service calls, for example 800/900, call disposition statistics and call detail information.
The source of data for the MTS system is 800/900 Call Detail Records (CDRs) generated by the various network switches. These CDRs are collected by network Adjunct Processors (APs), associated with corresponding ones of the network switches. Once collected, the CDRs are delivered to the MTS system for immediate processing. Upon receipt of the CDRs from the APs, the MTS system will forward periodically, for example hourly, the call statistics to the TVS. The MTS system stores multiple hourly CDRs for each of the special service numbers.
For call by call details, the TVS system is supplied with Enhanced Call Detail Records (ECDR) by the MTS system. For the current embodiment of the instant invention, the statistical data is sent to the TVS system on an hourly basis, and the ECDR data is sent to the TVS system in near real time. These records are used to generate additional different call detail reports, known as xe2x80x9cunpriced dataxe2x80x9d reports. In addition, these ECDRs are the source of a Real Time Traffic Monitor (RTM) system that enables a subscriber of the system to view in real time the operation of the network, i.e. the statistics relating to the calls directed to the special service call number(s) of the subscriber. In particular, upon signing onto the RTM service, a subscriber is given a password by the management of the network so that through a web browser, the subscriber may access directly the TVS system via the public Internet. The ECDR data sent to the TVS system can then be accessed directly by the subscriber in substantially real time so that the ongoing operation of the network, at least with respect to the subscriber""s special service call number(s), can be monitored by the subscriber. The subscriber can accordingly reallocate his resources, for example redirecting calls to his special service call number to different locations where the operators of the subscriber are located.
The present invention provides an Internet enabled and Web-based remote interface that allows a customer to retrieve their unpriced call traffic detail information and call disposition statistics in the form of reports, as well as access and view their real-time call traffic details relating to their special service call numbers.
To access their unpriced call traffic data and/or real-time call traffic details at a user""s remote customer workstation, a user first logs on to the internet through any internet access route, and then logs on to the enterprise Web-server. After verification of the customer""s entitlements to use the system, the Web-server downloads an available suite of services for that customer, which includes the TrafficView system tool, which is offered by the assignee of the present invention as the xe2x80x9cTraffic Monitorxe2x80x9d service or xe2x80x9cUnpriced Reporting.xe2x80x9d This service is provided to the customer through a service object that is invoked and maintained by a browser based backplane, and which calls, as needed, other objects, including objects to enable graphical displays of data to the customer. From the opening screen, the customer may select the opportunity to view their real-time traffic, and the Web-server will then download the service program object to enable this.
At the time of customer verification, the enterprise customer service management system has obtained certain information relating to an RTM profile maintained on a TVS server. This RTM profile information automatically prepopulates at least one field in a dialog involved in the opening of a unpriced data reporting screen or traffic monitor screen.
In this prepopulation process, data included within the customer profile is automatically entered into a field of a particular dialog. Through this prepopulation, the amount of required user input is minimized, thereby increasing customer usability.
In the preferred embodiment, a number of different unpriced call detail reports may be generated which are delivered via a novel web-based report generation and delivery system integrated within nMCI Interact.
A feature of the report generation and delivery system for unpriced reporting, is the ability to customize the reports a subscriber is entitled to receive. For example, a subscriber can obtain the call details of a special service call subscribed by him for a particular period of time instead of real time. Furthermore, the subscriber can download a data file comprising the raw call details of the special service call for a particular period of time.
The present invention thus provides a web/Internet based reporting tool for generating traffic statistics data as specialized reports and/or data files to subscribers who subscribe to the special service call processing service provided by the network; and, via the public internet:
i) provides the ability to download call statistics from a database of the TVS system so that a subscriber can format and design his own reports;
ii) provides a subscriber with the ability to instruct the system to provide reports on a particular given time through a particular method;
iii) provides reports to subscribers that include greater call details of their subscribed special service calls than other previous systems and methods; and
iv) provides real time enhanced call detail records to subscribers so that a subscriber can monitor in real time the operation of the network, so as to be able to effect the necessary changes expeditiously.